Ep #132: Get Some Sleep with Brandon Reed

Welcome to Real World Peaceful Parenting, a podcast for parents that are tired of yelling, threatening, and punishing their kids. Join mom and master certified parent coach Lisa Smith as she gives you actionable step-by-step strategies that’ll help you transform your household from chaos to cooperation. Let’s dive in. 

Lisa: Welcome, welcome, welcome. Welcome to today’s episode. I know I say this every week, but today I’m super thrilled because I have a very special guest joining us today. I want you to meet Brandon. Brandon is a former, I hope former, perpetually tired dad of two young boys. 

As a result of becoming a father, Brandon embarked on a mission to solve the age-old challenge of getting his kids to sleep through the night. So I mean, I just got your attention, listener, right there. Right? You’re like wait, a minute. There’s a way to solve this problem? Yes, there is. I am bringing it to you today right here on real world peaceful parenting. 

So Brandon’s journey began when he and his wife found themselves desperately searching for a solution to their sleepless nights after their oldest son was born. Faced with the frustration of not being able to find high quality sounds that were both long enough and free of interruptions, loops, and fading, Brandon decided to take matters into his own hands. 

With an innovative idea in mind, he created a podcast with perhaps the world’s most straightforward title, 12 hour sound machines, and little did he know that this simple yet brilliant concept would resonate with people from all corners of the globe. 

Almost overnight, his show began to captivate listeners worldwide, catering to a diverse range of needs and applications. As it turns out, people everywhere struggle to find focus, calm their anxiety, and achieve restful sleep amidst the chaos and distractions of everyday life. Brandon’s podcast has become a beacon of tranquility, providing a much needed respite in the form of immerse sound experiences that will lull listeners, try saying that three times lull listeners, into a state of relaxation and peace. 

So today, Brandon joins us here on the Real World Peaceful Parenting podcast. I am super excited to have him here and for Brandon to share his expertise on the fascinating and important subject of sleep and kids. Welcome, Brandon.

Brandon: Thanks, Lisa. Yeah, what an intro. Thanks. Glad to be here.

Lisa: Yeah, super excited. Sleep is something that my husband and I have been militant, and I literally mean that word. We have an 18 year old, and we have been militant about him getting uninterrupted sleep since a very young age. No phones in the room, long stretches of deep sleep because we understand that it releases growth hormone, decompresses the brain, allows it to grow, detoxifies the brain. As a result, we have a 6’4 young man who is very physically strong. I attribute a lot of it to genes, but also a lot of it to high quality sleep. So tell me what you think about that.

Brandon: Yeah, I mean, that all makes total sense that finding the ability to create a space in which you can have prolonged stretches of deep sleep is incredibly helpful. What I hear mostly from my listeners is how the show has been helpful for sleep for themselves, but then for their babies, for like their really little ones. 

It’s an interesting perspective intake that you just shared of like how that could carry past being a newborn then toddler. That’s when most parents think about I need to assist my kid with sleep. I think they let that go a lot once the kid kind of creates some independence in their life. That’s interesting that you’ve like continued to stay actively involved with your child’s sleep, even through his adolescence and growing years. It’s interesting. It doesn’t surprise me at all that that’s helped a lot.

Lisa: Yeah, even now, he sets asleep goal of the time to go to bed each night. I make sure that he’s meeting it because I was a biology major in college, and I learned a lot about growth hormone and how and when it’s released. Interrupted sleep prevents the growth hormone from being released. So it’s important that we set up good sleep hygiene from the start and then really follow it through all the years. Walk us through Brandon, how your life changed when you started the podcast with your young boys and their sleep.

Brandon: So I’ve been using brown noise in particular, which I’ll talk kind of what that is and how that’s different than like white noise here in a second. But I started using that for myself years ago. I don’t know seven or 10 years ago. Started streaming that mainly for focus and for work. 

I have some tinnitus in my ears, meaning I have some ringing in my ears, and so I don’t do well with silence. I’m a very like fidgety person. This all connects. I need to be doing something passive with my hands to engage my brain. That’s always been the case since I was little. 

This was like the auditory version of that is I could kind of create this constant, I call it a fidget toy for your ears is what I call it. I’ve heard people call it like a blanket for your brain. It kind of zeroes you out and focuses you in. So that’s how I started using it. Then started using it for sleep too. I used a box fan, like a physical box fan for a long time, and then started using brown noise. It was really helpful for me. 

Then when I had our first baby, we from the get-go experimented with different things. He never had like a silent room just so we could make some noise outside of his room and not wake him. But the reason I created this show was so that he could have something that would be long enough that he could sleep through the night. 

Just like you said in my intro is that was the issue is there were stuff online, but things were like eight hours usually. Some were like nine or 10. But like I’m trying to get my baby sleeping for 12 hours, and I don’t want him waking up. Then a lot of things even within those eight hours or 10 hours, you can hear an audible loop. Things with like click or loop, and it was very noticeable. That wakes you up, man. Your brain notices tiny little differences if there’s a really consistent noise happening. 

So anyways, I just built this brown noise that really attuned it to my ear. I was like okay more lows, less highs. Yep, that’s like a frequency I like. Then posted it as a podcast simply because there are file upload limits for songs, but there wasn’t for podcast. So I was like well great. Let’s do that. 

So I put it online, streamed it into my son’s room, and it really worked for him. Then, again, just like you said in the intro, it really did organically resonate very quickly. It was a congruence of things. Also, this was kind of like I was one of really the first ones that happened to do it as a podcast. Spotify in particular was really pushing for podcasts at that time.

I got some algorithm boosts and people just started finding it. I see two large groups. I see people using it just like isn’t for themselves and for their babies to sleep. There’s a lot of science behind why and how it helps. But let me just talk quickly about kind of brown noise, white noise, pink noise. Those are my three big ones. 

What I see with parents in particular is that white noise seems to be the most helpful for babies. That kind of is the gold standard for babies simply because white noise is the gold standard for sound cancellation, for sound masking. That’s the frequency that cancels out the most other ambient noise in an environment most effectively.

All of them have sound canceling properties. Now I use brown noise all day. I have it turned off now because I’m here, but like other than his I have brown noise on all day because I have babies outside my room, little toddlers, and they’re loud. So there’s good properties to all three. But white is really that golden standard because it cancels out noise really well. I have a lot of parents that use that. 

But white is like everybody’s familiar with that. It’s like a TV static, very high frequency. Brown is a very low, lots more bass, a more focus on those lows. You kind of reduce it or eliminate the highs in the frequencies. Then a pink is just a combination of those two.

Different people do different things. The science, it’s not in what frequency it is. You tend to see these buckets of people calling these higher stuff white, lower stuff brown, and the stuff in the middle of pink. But what I did with mine was literally overlay brown and white on top of each other to make pink. So it kind of has properties of both. I’ve seen a lot of success with people both for themselves and their parents in all three for three different reasons. 

Different brains resonate differently with different kinds of sounds for different kinds of reasons, whether that’s focus or ADHD. There’s parents who use it for children with autism. It can be very effective to help cancel out sounds and distracting noises in like a very busy environment when people go out into public, things like that. So that’s the main difference being brown, pink, and white. Those are my three most popular episodes and what I see people using for babies and kids a lot.

Lisa: I like it. The idea of it being a fidget toy for the ears really resonates with me. I have a son and husband who both have ADHD. We have a ton of fidget toys around our house sitting on desktops and tabletops because my son has to be doing something with his hands in order for his brain to work. So I love the idea of thinking about this as a fidget toy for the ears. 

Because part of the process, let’s talk about this for a moment and how your podcast could help with this. Part of the process of being able to go to sleep is being able to lay down, and it starts really as an infant, being able to lay down and self soothe to sleep, right? Relax the brain long enough for the sleep cycle to take over. 

I can see where introducing this at a very young age could be very beneficial in helping that child move away from dependence on the parent to soothe to an ability to self soothe. This is how the parent can get out of the room at bedtime, right? As the child needs to have the skills of being able to self soothe. I’m imagining, I don’t have any science, and you’ll tell me. I’m imagining that your podcast could help the parents accomplish this goal.

Brandon: Yeah, absolutely. So the show itself is not, obviously and you’re not supposing this, but like is not magic in another of itself. It’s not this like you turn it on, it’s like whoa, my baby sleeps. But what it does is it enables those things, exactly what you said. So one as an adult self soothe, you have to slow down your very complicated and multi-layered thoughts, your frustrations, your worries, your anxieties. 

For a baby, it looks more like removing distracting noises. So sights and sounds. So a darker room can help. There’s science behind whether it should be pitched back or not, and there’s people in both camps. But a darker room and then an environment without variability of noise. 

So that was what distraction looks like to a baby is a clink, or you’re watching a movie outside and there’s an explosion or something like that. There’s variability in the noise. If you even that out, that’s a baby’s version of slowing down what are, as adults, very anxious and uncomplicated thoughts so that the sleep cycle, like you said, can take over. 

So my show, there’s all sorts of sounds out there. There’s other podcasts now, much more. There’s YouTube. People have been doing this for a very long time to help them and their babies fall asleep. My show has just garnered a lot of attention for lots of different reasons, but one that I think, people should just try it out. 

Just listen to the episodes and then listen to others as well. You’ll find one that works. It does not work for everybody. There are people who come to my show, and they’ll leave comments saying I’ve tried every pink noise out there. This is the one. Then there are other people who I’m sure I don’t hear that they go to another show and they say that. Like I tried this other guy, but this one works for me. 

So see what works for you and then see what works for your children if you’re using it for your children. What do they sleep best to? When are they waking up? Every parent has played the game of like tweaking this, tweaking that honing, fine tuning this to get their child to sleep the best. CERTAINLY, my show is one of those tools that can help with that For those reasons.

Lisa: I love it. I love it. I wanted to ask you, as the parent, let’s talk about parents. I’ve had a fan in my room for probably 35 years. Usually when we go on vacation, my husband and I land in a city, get in the rental car, and go straight to Walmart to buy some cheap $10 fan. I have the fan app on my phone, which is terrible. It makes the weirdest noise. It doesn’t sound like a fan at all. 

So I’m thinking that I need to immediately switch over to your show while traveling but also at home. But let’s talk about parents and sleep. I know on your website it says that your audience is travelers, remote workers, students, doctors, listeners on the autism spectrum, insomnia sufferers, and parents with babies and young children. So let’s talk about those parents.

Brandon: Yeah, I think parents, I mentioned this a bit, but that it’s helpful for two reasons. It’s helpful, of course, for your babies for the things we just covered in the last topic. Then also for you. I mean it is incredibly important. Of course you put on your oxygen mask before you put it on your child. I mean that that goes for the sleep schedules as well. 

Like you got to take care of yourself too. With a newborn, newborn, listen, you can use white noise, you can get the room the right darkness, but like it’s gonna be brutal for a while. Kids are going to wake up. It’s going to be a hard season. You’re not going to get much sleep. But as you figure out what works for your baby, also figure out what works for you. It may be this is part of the routine for your baby and for you.

Whether that’s white noise for both or yeah white nose works for your baby but a fan works for you. I’ve got all sorts of fans. I’ve got oscillating fan, a bathroom fan, a box fan. At least I’m developing an app right now. One of the functionalities will be able to record your own sounds so that you can take sounds from your environment that work from home and then you can take them with you. 

So if you have a great fan that just works great for you at home, you can record it and then mix it with whatever else in the app and then use that. Because some things are just so like, just so, and it’s important to find those things. So yeah, whether that be a routine for your child or for you, this helps both. It’s important that you take care of yourself as you figure out what works for your child too. For sure.

Lisa: That’s awesome. I can’t wait for that. Bring your home on the road with you noise. I do have a very specific fan in my bedroom, and it’s too expensive to buy it and leave it in hotels. So that would be very valuable. Okay, so let’s talk about this. I’m driving to work right now, let’s say. I’m liking what I’m hearing. I want to try your app. Specifically, I like the idea of the brown noise. 

Walk apparent through how to get started. Walk me through exactly what I do. How do I broadcast this in a bedroom at night? Walk us through, sort of give us an in service on how to get set up.

Brandon: Yeah, really good question, Lisa. Actually, in any interview I have done nobody’s actually asked that. Like practically how does a parent take the next step and implement this into their routine? I like that question. So it’s a podcast. I’m developing an app. I’m also building a smart speaker app, but like right now it’s a podcast. I mean by the time you release it, it’ll be a podcast. 

So you go to any podcast player that works for you, type in 12 hour sound machines. You’ll see lots of playlists pop up. People create different things. Go to the actual show so you can see all the episodes available. Go to the show itself. One of the reasons that building an app and some other tools is because podcast feeds are not great for sorting and filtering. So it’s just one big list unfortunately. I’ve got like 125 at this point. So it’s tough in the podcast feed. 

But if you poke around and find some things that work for you. You can go to my site, and I have what’s called an episode index. So it’s 12hoursoundmachines.com. If you want to go to the episode index, it’s slash episode index. You can say I want to sort by type and by use. So rain noise for babies, nature noise for sleep, whatever it may be, and then you see a subset. That’s just much more helpful to be like listen, I really like rain noises. That’s been helpful. Let me find what else he has that’s rain. 

Then there’s individual links there to go to the various popular podcast platforms and say well, that’s that episode. So find what works for you. Maybe go to the site and see well, what else does he have related to waterfalls? Then you can play it. A lot of people just practically play through their phones because you just set it on your nightstand and play it. That’s certainly not the most like pleasing way to do it because it’s a small speaker. 

So you can do like a nice, smart speaker will get a much more full encompassing, work much better for sound cancellation, masking, things like that. Some people have sleep headphones that they wear, or there’re speakers that slide right under your pillow. Whatever it would work for you. Find the sound, a lot of people put it through their smart speaker so that it’s a nice full sound. Then you can use it.

Kind of the tip or trick that I share is that it can be tough when you use a smart speaker, whether it’s Alexa or Google or whatever Siri, it can be tough to grab the episode that you like. A lot of times it’s not an intuitive user interface. You’ll say play this, and it’ll just play the show from the first episode. Then you have to like say next to all the way to the one you like. 

So what you do is most people listen to my show on Spotify, but wherever you do, well, I think this is actually Spotify. Most people listen to it on Spotify. You create a playlist. Call it whatever you want. Say my son’s name is Cooper. I say Cooper’s brown noise. I put the brown noise that works for me into there. Then I say hey, Alexa, hey whoever, play Cooper’s brown noise, and it grabs that playlist and that one single episode. That seems to be most helpful for people all trying to navigate like oh man, it’s tough to navigate things and find it with your voice. That seems to help get straight to it. 

Also say, as it relates to finding what episodes work for you. I actually have for brown, pink and white, I’ve combined them with a lot of things. Brown noise plus a cat purring. One thing that’s specifically helpful for parents is that combined white noise with a heartbeat. So the heartbeat is sound masking, but the heartbeat seems to really be just like immediately soothing for babies because it obviously mimics the sounds they hear in the womb. 

That is the initial science behind why white noise works for babies at all. Is it’s supposed to mimic the blood like whooshing through the mother’s body, and that’s very similar to frequency they hear in the womb. I also have an inside the womb sound machine. There’s like a much deeper heartbeat. It’s like you’re underwater kind of in the amniotic fluid. That also really helps babies. So there’s a couple more tips for parents.

Lisa: I love it. I think you gave us the million dollar tip with that creating the playlist and putting the episode in there.

Brandon: A lot of people struggle through before they find that. They’re like oh, I’ll just create a playlist with the name of what I want to ask for.

Lisa: Yeah, I think you gave us the real insider scoop on that. I see on your website, you do have like brown noise and shower, white noise and pink noise and heavy rainstorm. What I’m impressed with is how hard you’re working to dial in a sound that works for people.

Brandon: Yeah, my audience, thank you for saying that. My audience is incredibly engaging. It’s so weird. It’s 12 hours of noise. But people reach out because it solves a felt need. Like they had a problem. This solves the problem. They reach out with their thanks, with their suggestions, with their issues of like hey, you did white noise plus cat purring, but like the cat was way too loud. Can you dial that in? People are just very engaged. 

Also on Spotify, they released this new function now where you can ask Q and A’s and there’s polls, and people are super engaged. The number one driver behind the new episodes that I post are people telling me what they want. When I start getting a couple, three, four, five of the same things, I just start putting it on a list, and that’s what I go grab next because people want to hear it. So yeah, for sure. 

If you’re listening and you want to hear something in particular, I say it in the episode descriptions and show description. Reach out, and that’s no joke. Like I read every email, and when I start getting ones that pile up, I’m like okay, I’ll just do that next.

Lisa: Oh, that’s great. That’s great. I mean sleep is important. In our family we talk about sleep all the time. My husband is an insomniac. So we’re always working on little tweaks and different medications and things we can try. We are always working on sleep in the Smith household. I mean it’s a regular topic of dinner conversation at our house. We report to each other how good our sleep hygiene is.

Brandon: Yeah, it should be a regular conversation. It should be way more of a conversation than it is. I think people just take it as it comes and they say either I’m good at sleep or I’m not. I don’t sleep well or oh, man, I sleep like a rock. The people who don’t sleep well just kind of take it as it is. It’s like no, there’s things you’re doing that you could eliminate those things. It could immediately get more helpful. 

It doesn’t mean insomnia is not a real thing and people don’t really struggle. But there are a lot of people that some real low hanging fruit that if you get rid of, you can sleep a lot better. If people are familiar with the Huberman Lab podcast, I don’t know if you’ve ever listened to that, Lisa. He’s a huge proponent of brown and white noise. 

In fact, I keep reaching out to my marketing team like let’s hook up with this guy. He’s incredibly popular, and he loves brown and white noise, focus and for sleep. Because he, of course, as a neuroscientist is a huge proponent of sleep. He talks about the properties of brown and white and the science behind why it’s helpful. But yeah, I think it should be more of a conversation in families for sure. So that’s good.

Lisa: Yeah, we talk about it all the time. We report how we slept the night before. If it went well, why? If it didn’t go well, why? My son will go off to college in the fall, and I’m pretty sure most of our daily conversations are going to be about sleep hygiene. Because it’s almost like a hobby in our household. We try a lot of different things all wanting to get those long periods of REM sleep and cycling through. 

I have a son that plays sport. He’s gonna play sport in college. A lot of performance is dependent on how good of sleep you’re getting over the long haul. So, it’s important to us. I too am a big fan of Andrew Huberman. Listen to his podcast regularly. Would love to be on his podcasts.

I like his mission in providing solid science to people for free. I really am a fan of that. I feel like that’s what I do on this podcast is providing parents with tips, support, and coaching on parenting, how to stay regulated for free, and it’s my contribution to the world. So that’s funny that we’re both. Actually, to be totally honest with you, let me tell you this funny story. I first heard about brown noise on his podcast, and shortly after you reached out to me, which was like okay, this is a sign that Brandon needs to come.

Brandon: Interesting.

Lisa: Right? Because it was a confluence of information happening at the same time.

Brandon: I feel like he’s talking about more and more. Just last week, he posted something else that was like check these out. There’s lots of free tools out there, brown and white. It’s helpful. As you say, you and your family are always tweaking tools to try to get prolonged periods of sleep. The thing that just popped into my mind is yeah, there’s all sorts of things you can do to do that, to create an environment that’s conducive to sleep.

I think my podcast is just one of those things. But it’s an important thing to not wake up from noise, from a car slamming a door outside, or a loud animal or whatever it is. If you’re sleeping in complete silence, that is a key contributor to breaking those long periods of sleep. So sound is just one element, but it’s an element and an important one. Yeah, shows like mine that provide these kinds of long, consistent sounds can definitely be helpful.

Lisa: Well, and let’s talk about this for a second as further evidence to the power of what you’re producing. You say on your website that on Spotify, you’re in the top 1% of all podcasts shared globally, which speaks to the need that you’re filling. Because to be in the top 1%, as a fellow podcaster, I know how hard that is. 

Brandon: Yeah. 

Lisa: You are really solving a problem out there to be in the top 1% with 12 hours of brown noise. 

Brandon: Yeah, yeah, that’s right. It’s interesting that you honed on that figure in particular. Most people see that, because we just broke 100 million total downloads. Most people see that, or the 300,000 downloads a day, and they’re like whoa. But that, to me, isn’t the stat that’s number one is most important to me as host of the show. But what’s the most telling to me of the trajectory and the momentum of the show is how much people share it. 

Because when you meet a need, people talk about this so passionately. Because if you have an issue and this solves the issue, like you can’t sleep, and now you’ve found this thing. You’re like oh my gosh. I slept a full night. I slept uninterrupted for eight hours. You tell people about that. Like someone else says, “Man, I could not get to sleep last night.” They’re like, well, let me tell you what worked for me because it helped me.” 

Then it gives them social capital to be able to like share something that helped because it’s probably going to help the other person. So that, to me, is an important metric that most people skip past is yeah, how much people share it because a lot of people share it.

Lisa: Yeah, well, when I know something that works, I want all the people I care about to know about it. Elusive sleep is one of those tools or skills or unmet needs, I guess I would say, that it is not socio economic or race related or income or job. It can be age related. But if you’ve struggled with sleep, you’re pretty desperate for solutions. When you find when, like you said, you want to share it with everybody out there.

Which was really my motivation for having you on is to here’s the tool. It works. There’s numbers to say it works, right? You’re on Spotify, 300 downloads a day. So I wanted everybody that listens to Real World Peaceful Parenting that struggles with sleep themselves, and whose kids struggle with sleep and getting to sleep and staying asleep. I wanted them to hear about this tool and have a chance to use it. 

Brandon: Yes. 

Lisa: Thank you for being here.

Brandon: Thank you for having me on, Lisa. You asked really good questions that got to the heart of a lot of things, and I think provide some really practical tools for parents. Another thing I’ll say, for parents in particular. If you have smart speakers in the room, another thing that’s helpful if you create that playlist, it’s something it’s really intuitive to say, the kid can invoke it by themselves with their little speaker in the room. 

That’s what my four and a half year old does now. He can say play Cooper’s sound machine, and it turns it on. So that’s also really easy too is if it can be more hands off. A kid can do it on their own. So also help. 

Lisa: That’s super helpful too. Okay, one last question because this just popped into my brain as you were talking. So let’s say Cooper is turning on his playlist. As a parent, when I find one episode that works, do I just go back to it every night? Or do I need a variety?

Brandon: Well, it depends on what works for your kid. What I hear overwhelmingly is that people find a noise and they stick with it. They are live or die pink noise. I’m thinking about creating like a social campaign that’s like team pink, white, or brown because people are super into their noise. 

I also have people that reach out all the time. Like, they love to try out every new one and see what works. Then they don’t like, don’t like, don’t like. Then they’re like oh my gosh, I thought it could get no better, but you just posted raining on pavement. That’s the best rain I’ve heard yet. That’s my new one. 

So there is that behavior, but especially for a kid where in just about everything consistency is key. What I hear for parents with kids is like, they just have a noise, and they stick with it. If it’s helpful for kids yeah, you could swap out dynamically on your phone in that playlist. Just put a new sound in there. Then when Cooper would say play Cooper sound machine, a new one would play instead.

Lisa: But in general, you find that with kids, it’s find the one that works and stick with it. Yeah, I’m a big fan of that too. I’m a big fan of routine and consistency. Kids want to know what’s expected of them. It helps them feel loved. Rules and consistency helps them feel loved, know what’s expected, and feel safe. So that’s the other thing I would imagine. I was anticipating you to say find the noise that works and stick with it. Because then that becomes a part of my bedtime routine. I hear that noise. I cue into self-soothing into sleep.

Brandon: It’s a full on trigger. I mean there’s no doubt. Like you have a certain noise that once you turn it on, you know that that’s sleep. When you hear it, it’s like, I keep saying blanket, but it seriously is. It’s just like you’re covered in that noise. It completely eliminates all the other small creeks and different sounds in your room, and you’re just like your brain is ready for sleep. That’s a real thing.

Lisa: Okay, Brandon, as we wrap up, in addition to brown, pink, and white noise, tell us one last tip that you wish you would have known when you first became a parent.

Brandon: When I first became a parent. I wasn’t sure where you’re going to go with that question. When I first became a parent, I would have told myself, this is totally off the topic of noise. But what I tell new parents, my friends who are having a kid for the first time, I always say you hear a lot of people who are past their like young child ages. They have older kids that are grown or out of the house. You see them looking back with very rose colored glasses saying oh my gosh, when they were one that was so amazing. Every moment was magic. Lots of moments are magic. 

But one of the thing I wish I would have known that like it’s also going to be really hard. Of course, I knew it was gonna be hard. I knew parenting was gonna be hard. But I didn’t realize how much I was gonna be hanging on by my fingernails and barely making it. My wife and I comment on that a lot. 

The whole phrase is just so true of like the days drag on in the years fly by. Because these early years are hard, and that’s okay. That’s what I tell people. Whether you agree with that or not, it’s okay that it’s hard. It’s okay that you don’t love the really hard and intense periods of very young child rearing. 

But there are absolutely highs. The highs are highs, but the lows are low. I think when you hear people speak with all these years of hindsight, it feels like there’s all these highs with like a couple lows. It’s like oh everything is magic. But it’s not all magic. It’s a lot of poop, and it’s hard sometimes, and that’s so okay to grind through that. That’s what I tell people when they’re having kids for the first time.

Lisa: I love it. I love it. I couldn’t agree more. That’s why one of the mantras here real world peaceful parenting is progress not perfection. Because it’s a dynamic ever changing relationship. Just when you think you have one figured out they evolve to two. Just when you get two under your belt, they evolve to three. Now I’m in the other end at 18. It also feels very hard and challenging. The worries are different. I can tell you I’m no longer worried my kid’s gonna choke on a great, but I whole new host of worries. So.

Brandon: More complicated worries, I’m sure.

Lisa: Much more complicated I have to say, which could be its own podcast. But yes, yes. I really encourage parents to think about progress not perfection because we’re just not going to get it right all the time. Well,  you definitely helped us today in the area of sleep and thinking about rest and never give up on looking for ideas. 

That’s what I really took away from today is never give up on the quest for a good night’s sleep. It’s work worth doing. I can say personally. Whether it’s in the quest of being a good parent, staying regulated, or job, or working out, it all starts, I think, at the baseline of a good night’s sleep. 

So, okay, podcast listeners. I hope you enjoyed our insightful conversation today with Brandon. As a fellow sleep obsessed person, his story really resonated with me. It’s incredible how Brandon took matters into his own hands, isn’t it? I mean creating 12 Hour Sleep Machine. I mean, how crazy is that? 

Today, we had the opportunity to delve into the challenges parents face when it comes to sleep and kids and their own sleep. Thanks to Brandon for being here. He shared his wealth of knowledge and expertise with us, providing valuable strategies that can make a difference, a world of difference in creating a restful sleep environment for your family. 

What I really want to encourage you all to focus on is a restful sleep environment for the whole family. Make it a priority, set some limits around it, talk about it. There is a huge importance of consistent bedtime routines, and the power of immersive sounds can contribute to that, right. It’s also incredibly important to promote healthy sleep habits for children and for the parents. 

Remember, we talk here all the time on we have to model for our kids. Kids don’t do what we say, they do what we do. So if you’re staying up late, if you have poor sleep habits, your kids see that then they’re not going to value sleep as much. So it’s very important that we promote healthy sleep habits for the whole family. 

I think Brandon did a great job of emphasizing how a good night’s sleep can positively influence our overall well being and enhance our ability to handle the demands of daily life. So it’s a reminder, today’s podcast served as a reminder that prioritizing sleep is critical not just for our little ones, but for our own self-care.

I was particularly impressed with the way Brandon’s podcast has resonated with people all over the world. It’s remarkable how his simple yet effective approach has helped individuals find focus, alleviate anxiety, and achieve restful sleep amidst the chaos of modern life. It serves as a powerful testament to our universal need all around the world for tranquility and calmness. 

As we wrap up today’s episode, in addition to thanking Brandon, I want to really encourage you listener to run, sprint, not walk, run to 12 Hour Sound Machines, his podcast and his website, for a rejuvenating auditory experience. You’re not going to be sorry. You’re not going to go wrong by visiting the podcast, download episode. Use the tip that he gave us. Create a playlist, download an episode, and give it a try for your kids. Turn it on and see what happens. You’ve got nothing to lose, and everything to gain from helping your kids get quality sleep. 

So let’s take Brandon’s advice to heart and create an environment conducive to rest and rejuvenation. Thank you for listening today. Brandon, thank you so much for being here. Any parting thoughts?

Brandon: Nope, not at all. Thanks so much for having me, Lisa. I really appreciate it. It was a helpful conversation, and I hope that your listeners were able to take some helpful piece of practical advice away.

Lisa: Yeah, I have no doubt that they’re really loving this episode. So thank you listeners for tuning in today. Until next time, I’m wishing you peaceful parenting and sleep.

Thank you so much for listening today. I want to personally invite you to head over to thepeacefulparent.com/welcome and sign up for my free peaceful parenting minicourse. You’ll find everything you need to get started on the path to peaceful parenting just waiting for you over there at www.thepeacefulparent.com/welcome. I can’t wait for you to get started. 

Thanks for listening to Real World Peaceful Parenting. If you want more info on how you can transform your parenting, visit thepeacefulparent.com. See you soon.